TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE…………………………………………………………………….…i
CERTIFICATION…………………………………………………………ii
DEDICATION……………………………………………………………..iii
ACKNOWLEDEMENTS………………………………………………….iv
TABLE OF
CONTENTS…………………………………………………..vi
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND THE CLARIFICATION OF TERMS
1.1. Freedom
……………………………………………………….……….3
1.2.
Determinism…………………………………………………………….5
1.3. Kinds of
Determinism…………………………………………………..6
1.4. Physical Determinism…………………………………………………...7
1.5. Ethical
Determinism……………………………………………………..9
1.6 Theological
Determinism………………………………..10
1.7 Psychological
Determinism……………………………...11
1.8 Logical
Determinism…………………………………….13
CHAPTER TWO
A HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM
2.1 Ancient
Period…………………………………………………………...15
2.2 Medieval Period…………………………………………………………21
2.3 Modern
Period…………………………………………………………..24
2.4 Contemporary
Period…………………………………………………...29
CHAPTER THREE
FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM IN THE LIGHT IMMANUEL KANT
3.1 The Doctrine of
Autonomy of the will in the light of Immanuel Kant……………………………………..……...32
3.2 Freedom as moral
Postulate……………………………..36
3.3 The doctrine of the
Phenomena and the Noumena vis-à-vis the Problem of freedom and determinism……………41
CHAPTER FOUR
CRITICAL EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
4.1 Critique of the
determinist’s Position…………………47
4.2 Demonstration of the
Freedom of the will..........57
4.3 Conclusion………………………………………………….…...60
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………..…62
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND CLARIFICATION OF TERMS
Human beings live in a world that is laden with many
possibilities. As a being with the capacity to choose between alternatives, he
has been able to surmount the numerous problems he has so far encountered. Not only this, he has been able to develop
this world by merely and freely choosing almost the best out of his many
alternatives. However, it has also come
to the knowledge of this same man that some external forces influence most of
his actions. This has led some men to the conclusion that man is, in fact, not
free. This is now a big problem in the
field of philosophy.
This problem of freedom of the will
and determinism has continued to perturb philosophers from the ancient period
till date. As a matter of fact, this
problem has seen philosophers and some scientists divided into two opposing
camps; those who hold tenaciously to the freedom of the will and those who deny
the reality of the freedom of the will.
The former are known as the libertarians while the latter group is known
as determinists.
It is in the midst of this
controversy that I have set out to defend the reality of the freedom of the
will in the light of Immanuel Kant, a philosopher of great repute, despite the
fact that the juice seem to have, ages ago, been pressed out of this free will
controversy.
Immanuel Kant lived all his eighty
years in the small provincial town of konisberg in East Prussia. He was born in April 22, 1724. His family was among the pietists, a
protestant sect somewhat like the Quakers and early Methodists. This
tremendously impacted on his philosophical works. Kant authored many
philosophical works some of which include Critique of Pure Reason {1781}, Critique
of Practical Reason {1788}, Critique Of Judgment {1790}, Metaphysics of
Morals{1797} and a host of others. His other woks, which he was unable to
complete before his demise on February
12, 1804, were gathered together under the title “opus
postunum”.
This work is divided into four
chapters. Chapter one which I have already started deals with the general
introduction and the clarification of terms.
Chapter two exposes the thoughts of some philosophers on this problem of
freewill and determinism from the ancient period to the contemporary era. In chapter three, we shall look into the
thoughts of Immanuel Kant on the freedom of the will. Chapter four is a critical evaluation and
conclusion.
This problem of freedom and determinism
from every indication is a metaphysical issue. At the same time, it is a moral
issue because to deny the freedom of man is to deny responsibility and morality
is built on freedom and responsibility. As a result of this, I shall limit my
work to the defense of the freedom of man and its relation to morality.
At this juncture, it is pertinent to
clarify certain terms for a better comprehension of the topic and the problem
we are about to handle.
1.1 FREEDOM
For the man in the street, ‘Freedom’
is the ability to do whatever one desires to do at any point in time. Philosophically, freedom can be seen as the
absence of constriction. Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary defines freedom
as “the state of being able to do what you want without anything stopping you”.
Freedom is the absence of coercion or constraint. Freedom can also signify that capacity or
faculty whereby individuals are left to form their lives through their
choices. This is called
self-determination and is often regarded as positive freedom or freedom from…
Freedom, however, has so many meanings.
Generally, the idea of freedom
connotes the following; absence of constraint, restraint, impediment, coercion,
compulsion or obstacles to the realization of certain willed goal; it connotes
also the ability or power to do what a person wills or to avoid what he does
not want. Battista Mondin in his book Philosophical Anthropology defines
freedom as:
That capacity which man has of choosing
to do or not do a thing when all the conditions for action are already present.
It is the sovereign control over the situation by which the will holds in its
hand the power to make the choice fall in favor of one of various alternative
possibilities.
This is really the sense of freedom I
am set to defend in this work. Freedom
is another title of man’s excellence and nobility. It distinguishes him from every other created
thing. It is this freedom that enables
man to swim through the ocean of possibilities in life. This freedom is also at the center of moral
practices. We praise or reproach persons for their actions because of our
awareness of the freedom in man. This is
what makes one a moral being. It is on
this ground that Immanuel Kant held tenaciously to the reality of freedom of
the human person. He located it in the
noumenal world (the sphere of the thing- in- itself).
I shall elaborate more on the views
of some philosophers concerning this issue as we move along. Suffice it to say here that freedom is in the
nature of man. Without freedom, the
moral law is useless. What then is
determinism?
1.2 DETERMINISM
This is a theory, which
holds that every event is necessitated.
It means that the rigid laws of nature, the laws of cause and effect
govern every thing. This implies that
this rigid law of nature is also governing man, being a part of nature. By implication therefore there is no question
of freedom in man since he cannot help doing what he finds himself doing. According to the determinists, all our mental
states and acts, including choices and decisions, and all our actions are
effects necessitated by preceding causes.
Determinism, in general, is the philosophical theory, which maintains
that for everything that ever happens there are antecedent conditions such
that, given them, nothing else could happen.
Determinists consider belief in self-determination or human freedom as
an unscientific illusion.
These determinists gave their reasons
why man is not free. These then have
given rise to different forms of determinism. Let us now consider some of these
kinds of determinism.
1.3
KINDS OF DETERMINISM
There are different kinds of
determinism depending on the reasons given why man is not free. Omoregbe Joseph enumerated five kinds of
determinism which include; “ethical determinism, theological determinism
physical determinism, psychological determinism and historical determinsn”. We also have logical determinism. Let us now consider these kinds of
determinism one after the other.
1.4
PHYSICAL DETERMINISM
Physical determinism holds that all
facts in the physical universe and hence also in human history are absolutely
dependent upon and conditioned by their causes. This means that all things in
nature, men included, behave according to inviolable and unchanging laws of
nature, which specify all actions. This hinges on the assumption in physics
that there are certain fixed laws that the heavenly bodies and the universe as
a whole obey, such as the gravitational law, the law of conservation of energy,
the law of relativism, and a host of other natural laws. Human actions and
other events are not regarded as guided by moral considerations but rather are
determined by the rigid laws of nature.
In his view, Omoregbe opined that
physical determinism denies the freedom of man.
According to him;
Physical determinism is the theory that man is not
free because he is part of physical law of nature and all his actions are
determined by the physical law of nature.
This type of determinism can be
easily deduced from the thoughts of some philosophers. The atomic theory of Democritus is a good
example. According to this theory;
“Things were simply a combination of various kinds of atoms…”This means that everything in nature,
including the human person since he is part of nature is a combination of
various kinds of atoms. This theory goes
as far as holding that the human soul is made up of atoms of a smoother and
finer nature.
Thomas Hobbes materialism is a good
example of a deterministic interpretation of the human nature in the modern
period. He conceived man as completely
material and man’s actions as totally controlled [determined] by the physical
law of nature. Unlike Democritus who
posited atoms in motion as responsible for all that is, Hobbes posited or held
that everything is as a result of matter in motion. He denied the existence of immaterial
substances or spiritual elements in man.
This implies that there is no freedom in man.
Reacting against this, Omoregbe
Joseph posed some questions. According
to him, is it possible to explain the human nature and the activities of man in
material terms? This and other such
questions seem to have punctured the arguments of materialists of the ilk of
Thomas Hobbes.
1.5
ETHICAL DETERMINISM
The advocates of ethical determinism
hold that men’s actions are determined by what they see as good. In other words, ethical determinism is a
theory that holds that men’s actions are determined by whatever they perceive
as good. Socrates and Plato are regarded
as the foremost founders of ethical determinism. According to them to know the good is to do
the good. Nobody does evil
knowingly. St. Thomas Aquinas who also
held this view argued that just as the intellect is made for the truth, and
cannot help embracing it whenever it is found, so is the will made for the good
and is not free to reject when confronted with it.
It is important to note here that
most of the advocates of ethical determinism did not deny the freedom of man.
For instance, St. Thomas Aquinas, in holding that man’s will is determined by
the ultimate good which for him is God, maintained that man at the same time
exercises his freedom when making choices among particular goods which St.
Thomas considered as the means to the ultimate end. Descartes, who opined that
man is determined by whatever he perceives as the highest good, added that
these, that is, knowing the good and being thereby determined by the good,
equally constitute human freedom.
1.6
THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
Theological determinism holds that
since God is omniscient and omnipotent he has pre-determined all that happen in
the universe and the choice man has to make.
This has been a problem to Christian thinkers in the medieval era. They were unable to reconcile God’s
foreknowledge of future events and man’s freedom. Jonathan Edwards, an American Calvinist and
theologian, saw human freedom as a contradiction. For him, there is no question of human
freedom since God is the ultimate cause and has foreknowledge of all that
happen in the universe.
It was St. Augustine who first made genuine attempt
to the solution of the problem. According to him, God's foreknowledge of future
human actions does not in any way determine those future human actions. It does not deny man’s freedom. Man still retains his freedom to do or not to
do.
Another version of theological
determinism is the one taught by protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and
John Calvin. This version holds that God has predestined some people for
salvation while others are destined for eternal damnation. Those who have been predestined for
salvation, God provides with his grace to enable them live a good life. They are known as the elect. This version portrays God as being unjust.
1.7
PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
Psychological determinism is the view
that our actions are determined by some psychological factors such as
instincts, motives, one’s environment and other factors that are regarded as
psychological. According to them, nobody
performs an action without a motive and these motives are effects of prior
causes, which are also effects of preceding causes, and so it continues.
Most philosophers conceive of
voluntary action as one that is caused by such inner events as volition, motive,
desire, choice or the likes. John Lock
in his view did not suppose that anything within the mind is causally
undetermined, nor did he think it necessary to suppose this in order to
preserve the belief in human freedom which he thought misleading to label
“freedom of the will”. He went further to define liberty or freedom as “a power
in any agent to do or forebear any particular action, according to this
determination or that of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the
other.” This means that a human being acts freely provided he is acting
according to the preference of his own mind, and this is perfectly consistent
with his actions being causally determined.
For David Hume there is no
philosophical problem of free will. The
whole dispute, he opined, has been purely verbal in character involving only
confusions in the meanings of word. In
his view free action is that which springs from the free motive of the
agent. He defined freedom as; ‘Being
able to act according to the determinations of one’s own will.’
This definition points to the fact
that human actions are caused. He went
further to argue that all laws are based on rewards and punishments and thus
rest on the assumption that men’s motives can be relied upon to have a regular
influence on their behaviour. Following
the fundamental point of his philosophy that causation is essentially constant
succession, Hume argued that to ask whether human action is caused is to ask
whether there are anything they constantly joined to.
1.8
LOGICAL DETERMINISM
Logical determinism is the theory,
which holds that whatever that is going to happen will happen. It implies that it is not in the power of man
to alter anything in nature for men’s wills are fettered.
Diodonus Cronus developed this
thesis. His fundamental principle was
that it always follows from the fact that something has happened that it
was going to happen and hence, that it
was true that it was going to happen by chance and nothing depends on the
deliberation and decision of man.
The stoics thought that the most
elementary consideration of logic shows this to be true. In logic, there is a law known as “the law of
the excluded middle”. This principle
holds that either a statement is true or it is false. There is no middle position, if this is so,
then it must hold for statements about the past, the present and the
future. For instance the fact that Nigeria got her
political independence in 1960 is true thousands of years ago. In other words, if somebody had made this
assertion that Nigeria
will have her independence in 1960 thousands of years ago, the assertion will
be true even though it has not yet materialized.
Before I conclude this chapter, it is
also important to mention that there are also other forms of determinism; soft
and hard determinisms. Soft determinism is the idea which holds that man is
determined at the same time it gives room for some freedom in human
actions. J.S Mill, David Hume and Thomas
Hobbes belong to this group. On the
other hand, hard determinism gives no room for freedom in human action. The materialists advocate this type of
determinism.
Like I mentioned earlier, this
problem of freedom and determinism has been there since the beginning of
philosophical speculation. In the next chapter, I shall x-ray the opinions of
different philosophers on this problem from the ancient to the contemporary
period.
Click “DOWNLOAD NOW” below to get the complete Projects
FOR QUICK HELP CHAT WITH US NOW!
+(234) 0814 780 1594
Login To Comment